In memory of Guadalupe Echevarria (1948-2023)

On 2 March 1982, a young woman called Guadalupe Echevarria sent a letter written on purple paper from Paris telling the director of the San Sebastián Festival, Luis Gasca, that she had had an idea: to organise a festival within a festival, completely dedicated to a new medium, video. A few months later, Echevarria, better known as “Guada” by those close to her, would head a team of four women (alongside Nuria Gutiérrez, Marta Pérez Yarza and Cristina Elguezabal) who set about turning San Sebastián into an international reference point for thinkers, artists and creators who were experimenting with video between 1982 and 1984.

The San Sebastian Festival archive contains all documentary traces of this experience, comprising 170 records of documents from the Video Festival Collection, as well as several photographs and myriad press cuttings. Through this rich documentary legacy we can understand how Guada’s proposal gathered new audiences around à la carte avant-garde video programmes, installations, music videos and seminars, as well as deploying a dense international network of collaborations and partnerships. In fact, it is impossible to describe the importance enjoyed by the video in the Basque cultural scene from the second half of the 80s without referring to this pioneer experience: from the Faculty of Fine Arts to the career of numerous artists, from experimental institutions like Arteleku to festivals and meetings in Vitoria, Tolosa, Getxo and Pamplona.

On 12 June this year, Guada died in San Sebastián at the age of 75. At the public presentation of the archive in December 2022, the research team on the Zinemaldia 70: all possible stories project paid tribute to this figure, whose steps we had passionately followed through her entries in the archive and also through discussions with her. With the publication of this purple letter, announcing the dream of a young 34-year-old woman who would end up playing the lead part in one of the most daring and innovative episodes in the event’s seven decades, we continue to stress the importance of her memory, essential in understanding the history of the San Sebastian Festival.